


either / or

by fishcola



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: -slaps fic- you can fit a lot of projection in this baby, Angst, Identity Angst, Other, Pornography, Self-Reflection, drugs and alcohol, highkey gender feelings, lowkey pining, no explicit sex yet but discussion of pornography and sexual attractions, nonbinary!pat, queer imposter syndrome, very much a WIP without an outline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-07-20 11:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19991581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishcola/pseuds/fishcola
Summary: pat knows that being indecisive is annoying. no one loves to wait in line behind the asshole staring at the menu. no one likes to make plans with the guy who says 'oh i'm up for whatever.' a shrug is not an acceptable answer to a yes-or-no question.sigh.people you've been before that you / don't want around anymore / that push and shove and won't bend to your will / i'll keep them still





	1. speed trials

**Author's Note:**

  * For [riverblujay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverblujay/gifts).



> an undirected ditty for **riverblujay** 's prompt, because they are awesome, encouraged on by L's kindness, because they are an enabler in the best way.
> 
> not sure where this one is going, but i reckon it'll take about **six** chapters to get there, why is it always twice as long as i think. 
> 
> everything herein is fundamentally untrue in the literal sense, cause, yknow, RPF. it may be anguish-inducingly true in personal sense, though, so warning: might bum you out if you (too) have gender feels, out there.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [there] is an ambiguity in Elliot's music, and in particular in "Speed Trials." You don't really have a sense of whether it’s a happy song or a sad song...[the opening] could be in E minor in which case it would be quite sad, or it might be in C major . . . you really don’t know, and he doesn’t really give it up for quite a while . . . . 
> 
> _(Christopher O'Riley, NPR, All Things Considered, June 13, 2006)_
> 
> from Schultz, Tonal Pairing and the Relative-Key Paradox in the Music of Elliott Smith, Music Theory Online, Volume 18, Number 4, December 2012. http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.12.18.4/mto.12.18.4.schultz.html 

For a long time, Pat only thinks about it when he’s really, really stoned. And only when he’s gotten stoned with Brian. And only long after Brian’s fallen asleep, snoring adorably on Patrick’s couch, which has gotta be uncomfortable. He always offers the bed. It’s the least he can do, considering that Brian’s his cool young friend who, like, knows where to get weed, and who’s kind enough to acquire it and to ferry it over and to indulge his old fuck coworker who doesn’t know how to pack a bowl and doesn’t have anyone to smoke it with anyway. 

So yeah, uh. He stares at Brian and thinks. 

Not like _that_. He’s not—he doesn’t let himself think like that. Ever. 

(Brian’s unattainable, for a myriad of reasonable reasons including age, professional relationship, relative attractiveness, and Pat’s waffling uncertainty about his own sexuality.)

He’s just looking at the fingernails. The hair. The mustache, when it emerges, scratchy-sad at first and then increasingly magnificent. 

( _I’m learning how to tame it_ , Brian grins out from under the brushy swatch. _New skill set._ )

The floral print shirts with rolled cuffs and buttons undone. The tight colorful jeans. The unapologetic dad jorts. The vests. The short shorts. The wifebeaters. The croptops. The suits that, despite being ill-fitting, are always ill-fitting in _exactly_ the right places. 

( _I feel like a Christmas ham_ , Brian had complained, sweaty and perfect, before he melted off every vestige of that sharp grey suit and looked fabulous the whole time.)

How does he do it. How does he cycle through this wild array of outfits and look perfect in each of them, flit from iconic look to iconic look, flirting with every connotation, a visual style both colorful and bold. 

( _You should let me give you a makeover,_ Brian chirped at him one day. Pat answered dryly, _I’m worried that you’d pretty me up too much._ He didn’t say that he was worried he’d like it.)

That thought’s...nice, to indulge. How Brian would dress him, if given free reign. It’s not _just_ nice because imagining Brian’s tender attentions, his fingers skirting over Pat’s body is— 

well _shit._ No. He doesn’t think those kinds of things. 

It’s kind of nice because Brian might put him in—well, anything, really, kid’s got an array of ideas for any prompt, and dressing Pat would surely be no exception. The kid has a costume box, he knows that, he saw it at their house, opened it up and found an array of wigs and props and dresses and all that shit. 

(God, he could just—he just lets himself—for one moment, one shining lovely moment—imagine Brian putting him in a dress. He’d probably look like a disaster, but he’s _never_ ever ever worn something like that, even as a prank, and he’s always wondered— 

but no, he wouldn’t be able to bear Brian laughing at him.)

So when he’s stoned and nearly sleeping and Brian’s drooling on the couch cushions, Pat indulges himself. What does it feel like to be Brian, he wonders. To dress however you fucking want, and never worry. To go from smooth-faced and fluffy-haired—hair so long his sister braided it and studded it with flowers—to short-cropped curls and dad mustache. To effortlessly flaunt and be branded a twink and to just laugh at that and wiggle his ass and say _oh wouldn’t you like to know_. 

(Brian’s not a twink, though. Pat found this out when they were stupid high, one other time. Brian was flopping all over him and laughing about something, and then scowling and pulling Pat’s hair and complaining— _everyone thinks I’m a bottom, Pat—_ he groused. _Where do they get these ideas. Is it just because I giggle? You can’t giggle and also like to drive?_ )

Pat doesn’t know what’s allowed and what isn’t. Who’s allowed to giggle, or to wear nail polish, or to _fuck the dickens out of someone_ , as Brian so delicately puts it. He just knows that what he wants, he’s not allowed to have. 

The commenters don’t know shit, of course. They pick apart all of Brian’s body and his mannerisms and his outfits, without appreciating how much of it all is for the stage. They’re not seeing anything _real_. 

Pat tells himself this again and again, when he sees people commenting about him. It’s not that they say mean things. It’s mostly nice. Usually just innocuous weirdness about his arm. Comments about his hair. The worst is just constant advice on beard length, but he doesn’t mind that really. You can’t please everybody. 

They keep calling him a _lesbian_ , though, and it makes his skin crawl. 

Not in a _bad_ way, either. Just an uncomfortable way. Like, somehow, despite it all, despite no one ever noticing or caring or even thinking—can they _see_ …? 

(Brian, even, doesn’t see. He calls Pat ruggedly handsome and gives him fashion scolding and tries to cheer him up, but he doesn’t suggest anything like _that_.)

But it’s not just one person on the internet. There’s dozens that stare at his long black greasy hair and his round glasses and his beard and his jawline and his flat skinny chest and still manage to think _something about this person is projecting a womanish energy_.

What he’s doing, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he wants to stop, either. Or keep doing it. Or do it more.

He closes his eyes. He knows he kind of looks like a male Simone. The internet has told him enough times. He wonders what it would be like to look like Simone. To be all soft curves and sharp laughter and long flowing hair. She’s delicate, in a way he is not, and smooth and fluttery. Her body’s gorgeous. And of course, she has a— 

He flushes hard red, embarrassed blushing at nobody. The room is fucking empty, except for a sleeping Brian— 

Brian, who’s a top, apparently, who likes to _fuck the dickens_ out of the types of things he finds attractive— 

Pat indulges the thought—of what it’d be like to be fucked—he’s never—

He’s not small enough, though. Or dainty enough. Or got the right machinery, or the right mindset. No, it’s all— 

it’s all wrong. Everything he’s got going on is against it. He needs to let it go. 

`????`

Pat doesn’t really watch porn. He did, when he was younger. Oddly it was a lot more appealing when it was sinful and risky—Catholicism will do that to you—but he’s not a nervy church kid anymore and there’s no late-night sneaking onto the family computer and white-knuckled dial-up loading times and nuking the search history on netscape navigator and sweating in bed at night about his eternal soul. 

Nowadays he’s a thirty-something long-haired manhattanite, and there’s no _ritual_ about it, so he rarely bothers. He just looks at dirty gifsets on the toilet and jerks off, like anyone. 

Or presumably like anyone? Maybe other dudes out there are watching full-length pornographic feature films. Maybe they don’t find the plot contrivances and bad lighting distracting. Maybe everyone’s got favorite porn stars that they know by name. Maybe all the straight guys are doing it differently. Pat wouldn’t know. 

He wouldn’t know, but sometimes he suspects. Whenever it’s late at night and he can’t sleep and he considers trying watching something dirty to get off. He needs something longer than a 3-second cumshot. So he opens up a private browsing tab and moochels around. 

No one’s looking for what he’s looking for, it seems. It’s all sorted by tit size and race, by gender and by sex act. The cataloguing is wildly unuseful. Pat doesn’t particularly care, exactly what they do or what machinery they have. He’s looking for something else, and it’s hard to articulate what it is. Believability, maybe. Maybe he wants guys that are less boxy. Maybe he wants girls that are less insatiable. It’s complicated. You can’t search for _candor_ though, on Redtube.

You’d think that the amateur stuff would do it, then, but honestly it’s usually worse. Ticks all the wrong boxes. Dim and shaky and no less outlandish than the high-production stuff. Lots of POV, which Pat hates—dear Mary mother of Jesus, the last thing he wants is to become a menacing ghost with a dick—no, no, it’s all wrong. Why can’t he just watch hot people fucking and not be embodied in the act, not commit to identifying with any particular jerkoff, and not get jolted out of it all by a fucking star wipe like _Jesus Christ did they edit this bullshit in powerpoint—_

Queer porn, he finds, is the best search term for what he’s getting at. This raises questions that Patrick studiously dismisses. You don’t have to rationally justify what you’re hot for, okay? No one does that, so why does Pat need a goddamn thesis about why he jerks off to what he does. It’s not really about who fucks who or with what or who has the sickest undercuts. It’s just that they look like real people, sometimes. People he might like to get a drink with. People he might have glanced over at in college and known _those people are too fucking cool for me but I bet they have hot sex._ People who might have looked him up and down and shrugged and invited him to an orgy. 

He would have declined, for the record.

Look, maybe he’s got a voyeurism thing. Maybe he just likes variety. Maybe he’s into different kinds of bodies. Is that really a sin? 

Well yes, probably it technically is. But he’s a grown-ass adult. As long as he doesn’t inflict his bullshit on anyone else, he’s not gonna fucking feel guilty about it. 

He still clears his search history. For no one, for no reason. Catholicism, maybe. 

`????`

Putting half-stoned Pat next to sloppy-drunk Brian is like storing your flammables next to your highly-reactives—fuckin’ just _don’t do it_ that’s what the goddamn fire diamond is for—but it’s one of Simone’s parties and she’s not super into lab safety. They’ve both wandered out onto the balcony to catch a breath of air and also a breath of not-socializing-for-a-minute. Simone’s fuckin perfect but she’s also always horny on main and when she gets drunk and high at the same time her jokes can get a little fucked up. 

“That was a friggin’ crazy game, huh?” Brian says. He’s got his shirtsleeves rolled up and two buttons undone, and his hands are on the railing and he’s pressing his waist up against it and staring up at the moon. 

“Yeah. Fuckin’ Simone.” Pat’s resting his elbows on the railing too, but the opposite way, hands crossed, looking down at the alley. There’s an animal in there, wending around the dumpster, and he’s trying to figure out if it’s a cat or a racoon. 

“I didn’t even know _would-you-rather_ could have rules,” Brian laughs up, feet hooked under the metal, elbows extending and unextending as he shifts his weight back and forth, rocking himself. “Gotta add it to my car game repertoire.” 

“Uh-huh,” Pat murmurs. Normally, his reticence’d be enough to turn Brian off the topic, but the kid’s red-faced drunk and smiley and chatty like he gets. 

“Or maybe not. Might make for some awkward road trips. Too many arguments.” 

“Yeah. Or like…” Pat grasps for verbs. “...bring up things you’re not supposed to talk about.” 

Brian laughs. “No worse than _never-have-I-ever,_ I think. I’m not shy. Maybe I just spend too much time talking about my dick on the internet.” 

Pat snorts. “The tragedy of the modern age.”

“I don’t think it’s weird to feel awkward, though. The whole _point_ is to make you awkward. That’s the whole gambit, right? ‘Cause being real is awkward. Like with icebreaker games.” 

“I guess,” Pat murmurs. “I don’t do shit like that very often.” 

“You did fine,” Brian assures, and Pat doesn’t love the tone. Like he’s trying to come around to something, like he’s comforting Patrick about something, like he’s trying to say _yeah I listened to you a little harder than I should’ve._

Patrick sighs. The kid’s drunk, and he’s looking over now, and there’s fuckin’ nothing Pat can do.

Brian just goes for it. “You’d really rather change your pronouns than your hair?” 

The thing is _definitely_ not a cat, it moves wrong. Maybe it’s a possum, though. It doesn’t have that cute racoony build. Or maybe it _is_ a cat, a fat well-fed one with a skinny tail. Or maybe it’s the biggest fuckin’ rat he’s ever seen. That’d be a real trip. 

“Yup,” is all Pat says. 

“Sorry that Simone made fun of you,” Brian says, and even without glancing up Pat can feel the eyes boring into him. “For, um, _ruthlessly protecting your personal brand_ , or whatever she said.”

“It was a good joke. No hard feelings. Simone’s chill. She knows me.” 

The fucking stare, like lasers into his skin, makes his arm hair stand up on end. 

“So’ve you changed plans about the haircut then, or…?” 

Pat winces. Yeah, yeah, he hadn’t calculated. That when he dropped his voice to dry deadpan and said _pronouns, of course, Simone. You know how long this hair took me to grow out?_ and everyone giggled politely and moved on to less invasive-funny questions… he hadn’t figured that Brian would notice. Would remember. That just last week Pat was thinking about it. Shave and a haircut, two bits. 

_Maybe it’s time for a change,_ he’d sighed, brushing his hair out of his eyes. _Been wanting a new look, kinda._

 _I know you think the undercut’s out,_ Brian pointed out with his ice cream spoon, gesturing, _but there’re other options along that line which don’t look quite so fashy._

 _Hook me up with some pics,_ Pat had said. _I’ll think about it._

And now Brian’s looking at him hard, if a tad unfocused, and the booze has exposed his brilliant mental machinery enough that Pat can glimpse it working. Can see him offering an out. Pat should take it. He doesn’t. 

“Nope. Still waiting on those pictures, by the way.” 

Brian pauses. He’s a little slower than usual, when he’s been drinking, but infinitely more wiggly. He’s waving back and forth now, as if the movement is driving the gears in his brain. 

“Simone shouldn’t’ve asked you that, huh.” 

“She knows me,” Pat repeats. “But not really that well.” 

He can feel the shaking on the railing, and it kind of freaks him out. He’s a little afraid the kid’s gonna break it, even though it’s sturdy old metal, and go plunging down to join the giant mutant rats below. He looks over, to check, to maybe admonish him for being _so_ cavalier about where he’s shifting his weight— 

Brian’s staring at him so fucking _hard_. Like he’s tipsy-stupid and trying to do algebra. “Would you—” he pauses, cuts himself off, starts again. “If you could—” Shakes his head again, sharp, second try also aborted. “What if—”

 _Holy shit, three strikes, you’re out, kid, you should just let this one go,_ Pat thinks idly, that kind of hazy snarky observation that doesn’t get out of him, when he’s mellow-floating like this. If he were sober, he coulda polished it a little, and barked it out, and made this conversation end. But Brian’s drunk, and Pat’s high, and they’re doomed to enable each other, it seems. 

The fourth formulation, Brian hits on the winner, and gets it all out clean and clear. “What pronouns _should_ I use for you, Pat?” 

“Whatever you want,” he sighs, drops his gaze. The possum’s gone. Or hiding. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“It _does_ matter,” Brian insists, and slides closer. “People care a lot about that.” 

“Sure. Yeah, sorry. Wrong way to say that,” Pat gestures vaguely. Fuck, he’s so _bad_ at this, he can’t even touch this conversation with a ten-foot pole without putting his foot in it. Disgusting. “I shouldn’t—of course it matters to people.” 

“So…?” 

“It really doesn’t matter to _me,_ though,” Pat forges through, because that’s the closest approximation to saying what he wants to. To saying that it doesn’t hurt him, being a _him_ , that everyone looks at his sharp jaw and scruffy beard and flat chest and categorizes him tidily and that’s fine, that’s just fine. Not a problem. Doesn’t bug him in the slightest. Although he does wonder… 

Brian cocks his head, like he’s figuring shit out, even with all the IPA sloshing around. “Are you non-binary, Pat?” 

“Dunno,” Patrick murmurs into the alley. “I’m not hip to what the kids are calling everything, these days. Y’all are beyond me. Back in school I was just a _queer_.” 

“Genderqueer?” 

Pat brushes back his hair, exasperated. “I really don’t know what that means, Bri. Probably not.” 

Brian purses his lips. “Genderfluid, maybe?” 

“ _Stop_ it,” Pat groans. “I don’t know _._ I’m just—I’ve got a dick and I’m fine with it, all right? And I’d be fine if I didn’t have it, if I had—well. The opposite. And I’ve only fucked women, before you ask. But I’d fuck a guy, sure. But I’m not—this isn’t important. Any of it. It’s not a _problem_.” 

“Sorry,” Brian says, immediately, blushing double-scarlet so hard it’s visible in the moonlight. “I shouldn’t, um, be pushing. Like that. I didn’t mean to make you come out—” 

“It’s not _coming out_ ,” Pat sighs. “I don’t—I’m not anything, I’m just being stupid. It’s all, like, theoretical. Doesn’t mean a damn thing. In practice I’m just a normal straight white asshole, like every other asshole. I shouldn’t—” 

Brian touches his arm, and Pat jumps. 

“You don’t have to earn it, you know,” Brian murmurs, wide dark pupils. “To call yourself something.” 

“I’m just an asshole,” Pat sighs. “Know I’ve earned that one, at least.” 

“Don’t say that, Patrick.” He frowns. 

“Let’s go back inside,” Pat says, forcefully. “I’m getting cold.” 

“Okay, Pat,” Brian relents, and shrinks back a little, and they head back in. 


	2. no name no. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Got bitten fingernails and a head full of the past  
> And everybody's gone at last  
> A sweet sweet smile that's fading fast  
> 'Cause everybody's gone at last  
> Don't get upset about it  
> No not anymore  
> There's nothing wrong  
> That wasn't wrong before  
> Had a second alone with a chance let pass  
> And everybody's gone at last  
> Well I hope you're not waiting  
> Waiting around for me  
> Because I'm not going anywhere, obviously  
> Got a broken heart and your name on my cast  
> And everybody's gone at last  
> Everybody's gone at last  
> 
> 
> \-- "no name no. 5," Elliott Smith, _Either/Or_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired and plot-idead and looked-over by the superb **riverblujay** except the part with all the typos in it THAT'S ON ME

Pat doesn’t even cotton on until the whole rest of the video team has already done it. 

Jesus _Christ_ he is so fucking bad at being a person on the internet. It’s a miracle his younger coworkers haven’t just confiscated his social media accounts for his own good.

He didn’t even realize it was a _thing_. That’s privilege for you. Not noticing because it’s easy. Not noticing something right under your nose. Not noticing until you’re elbowing your way into a snobby bar and some snobby asshole isn’t letting you in to get your snobby drink because he’s too busy having a disgusting conversation about people he knows nothing about but he thinks are _ignorant of basic biology_ or some other dumbfuck thing. Pat only overhears snatches. Something about social justice weirdos. Pronoun pins. How if we keep going this way everyone’s gonna be changing their names every Tuesday or whatever. 

He tunes it out. Dumb slippery-slope arguments by assholes in bars are nothing new, really. He grew up in the nineties, in Texas and in Maine, in rural towns, in military families. Culture changes slowly and people are ugly about it while it’s going. 

The scumbag mentions Twitter, though, in passing, and Pat’s torn from his feeling of pleasant schadenfreude—the girl he’s talking to looks ten seconds from giving him the brush-off—with a pang of _oh shit people do that, huh._

He thumbs open his phone with his left hand, angled sideways, one arm on the bar waiting. 

Yeah, Brian has them on there. he/him. 

Simone too. she/her. 

Also Jenna. she/her. 

_Fuck._ He doesn’t—

“...so then did you want to close out or…?” 

Pat lifts his head up to the bartender, who’s staring at him boredly, waiting for his answer. He stutters a half-apology in embarrassment, but keeps his tab open. It might take him a couple drinks to process this. 

He takes his drink in one hand and weaves back through the dim and crowded bar. It’s full of booths and standing folks, but Allegra and Thomas have somehow managed to claim a pool table anyway.

“Nice get,” he approves. “But they’re gonna kick us out when they see how bad I play pool.” 

“It’s not pool, Patrick,” Thomas corrects grandly. “It’s _billiards._ ” 

Pat scans the table, sees the strange red-and-yellow balls, makes a face. “Oh, great. What’s the difference?” 

“We have no idea,” Legs grins. “So try to look like you know what you’re doing, aight?” 

He takes a cue, and Thomas googles some rules, and they proceed to fuck around ungainly in the brown-greenish light. It pulls him back from anxiousness, to have something else to think about: trying to remember how to bridge his hand and trying not to whack into bystanders and trying to identify the slightly-too-faint songs on the playlist. It’s a good one, the playlist, half classic rock and half old punky stuff—and it’s a good drink, nice and strong—and it’s good company, probably the two people he feels most comfortable with in the world. 

It lulls him into a false sense of sense of security, all that, and his drinking-too-fast brain slips up and suggests to him how easy it would be to just _ask_ , and his doofy body turns breezily and _does._

“Hey, should I put my pronouns on my Twitter bio?” he says, without preamble, to the pair of them. “Is that a thing people do?” 

“I do it,” Thomas says easily, chalking his cue, but Legs cuts in over him— 

“Yeah, Pat. You really should—it’s like. It normalizes it. ‘Cause like, not everyone’s cis, right? But it’s not fair that only trans people have to flag it.” 

“Makes sense,” Pat says automatically, and when his brain catches up he finds it really _does_ make sense. If Brian—and Simone, and Jenna, and _everyone—_ is doing it—it’s the answer he expected, and yet it still makes the last sip of his old-fashioned hit his stomach fucking sideways. He’s not _drunk_ , no, but the mouthfeel clocks him that way nonetheless, that acrid-cloying way when you’re far too deep in and you taste your drink and your body forcibly rejects it, categorically refuses to hurt itself any more than it’s already been hurt. 

He doesn’t run off right away. No, he counts off two minutes, second-by-second, as the conversation slips on. He waits until they’re squabbling with some well-meaning bystander about how snooker works (“you can’t play cutthroat with a set for blackball,” “eh we’ll figure it out, thanks,” “no I mean, it’s not divisible by three…”) when he excuses himself to go to the bathroom and get another drink. 

“Feel free to rack ‘em without me,” he notes over his shoulder. 

“Coward!” Legs laughs after him. “You’re just afraid of my _balls_!”

He snorts performatively and flees, because if he waits she’ll find a worse pun, and also because he has the urgent need to go try out a preview of the full-length feature panic attack he’s planning to have at home. 

Pat pushes his way past a crowd of people—women in line—and for the first time in his human life, he looks up at the picture of a little stick figure in not-a-dress and...hesitates. 

Oh god, if this stomach-lurching is gonna be a _thing—_

A stumbled moment later, he’s ensconced in a stall, with as much privacy as a crowded bar allows—so, about a minute-and-a-half of staring at sharpie graffiti. His hands are on his knees and he closes his eyes and _thinks_ , really thinks, about his options here. 

Obviously, there’s a right answer. He/him. 

He can spend hours going over it again at home, stressing about it uselessly, but that’s the long and short of it. It’s easy, because it’s right. The string that it plucks in his heart is familiar and fine, so well-used that it stays in tune even when it’s left long silent. 

Of course, he’s gonna stress about it like a fucking moron all week, like it’s an open question, like it’s a puzzle, like he could _ever_ bear putting his ill-formed vague sense of unease forth on a public forum for scrutiny. Like he could look himself in the mirror and see his beard and his nose and his angly-square face and ever justify his right to— 

Look, he/him is just right. 

It’s right. So simple, so easy, makes sense. Sure, he’s cycled through a half-dozen body image issues before, but in the past they’ve always been solved by looking _more_ masculine, not less. Getting some muscles on his skinny arms. Letting his stubble grow. Slimmer frames to show off his sharp angles. It’s all led the same direction, chasing good feedback on his look, from friends and coworkers, from one-offs on Tindr and randos on Twitch. He’s better scruffier, stronger, and lower-voiced. Male. Like, of course. He/him. Great, done worrying about it. 

Except. 

Now Brian will know _._ Will know—will think—that he’s _lying_. 

Is he lying? 

The ripple up into his chest of cognitive dissonance is so sharp and foul and eerily familiar that Pat chokes a little. He doesn’t _know_ if he’s lying. It’s only kind of a lie, anyway. Would Brian think it was better to leave it off, or to lie? 

Brian wouldn’t take the easy way, that’s for sure. Brian would go boldly into the unknown. Brian wouldn’t care, if his sister would see, or his Discord server, or the rest of the wide rude internet world. Brian, who wears nailpolish and gyrates his hips and proclaims his love of eating ass and flutters his eyelashes when he’s got a clumsy black eye and says _doesn’t it look like cool punk eyeshadow?_ Brian, who’s beautiful, and bi. 

But even _Brian’s_ a he. Not that anything about nailpolish has anything to do with dicks. Not that dicks are necessary to—fuck. _Fuck._

Pat presses his knuckles into his eyesockets. He should really be able to take this heat. If privileged white boys in big cities are too chickenshit _scared_ to live their truth then what good are they. But if people talk to him about it, ask him about it, he’s...wildly unprepared, at best. Recklessly ignorant at worst. He’d be doing more harm than good. Brian already had him nearly jumping off the fire escape just plain asking. If he has to _defend_ himself in any capacity, he’s sure to look like a dick. An even worse dick. 

Why’s it always come back around to dicks. 

He digs his knuckle into the ridge near the corner of his eye, hard enough to force out tears. Okay. He needs to reach inside himself right now and snuff out this fucking candle or it’s going to suck out all the oxygen in the room and leave him gasping in front of Legs and Tom. Panic can come later. When Pat’s lying on his bed and petting Charlie and wishing he’d been born in 1850 or 1950 or some time devoid of yawning yearning bizarrely tempting possibility— 

well fuck, _fuck._ That’s probably the worst thought he’s ever— 

well not _ever,_ of course he’s probably thought worse asshole things a-plenty— 

fucking _shit_ he should just go see if those assholes are still at the bar and if they need a new friend. 

Pat sighs, and stands, and rubs his face and decides—well first of all, to never rub his fucking face in a public bathroom again—but more importantly, that this one needs to be tabled. That any self-respecting normal person would just shelve their feelings and get up and go be normal and freak out about it at home, like a— 

— _fuck_ — 

like a man. 

`????`

For the rest of the night—it’s short—Pat keeps it together. Mostly. They...he risks it. Thinking it. Slotting it into Thomas and Allegra’s chatter, seeing if— 

_“So how’s that amber ale?”_

_“Eh, it was fine. I drank mine though—try Pat’s, if you want to taste, they got the same one._ ” 

Oh _fuck_ , it sounds breathtakingly— 

Legs could really have said it that way, Pat’d never have noticed— 

fuck. This can’t be something that...that Pat works out here. Not in here. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong century, wrong body, wrong everything. Like watching an R-rated movie next to your mom. Like doing your taxes at a strip club. Like glimpsing someone on TV and thinking _they’re hot_ before you see that they’re on trial for murder. 

Well, at least if Thomas and Allegra find Pat strange, they don’t say so—other than mocking him mercilessly when he retires early, blessedly drunk enough that nausea crowds out the space for doubt. 

`????`

Pat opens Twitter fairly often at work. It’s kind of fucking around, but when you’re an _internet personality_ or whatever, it’s also kind of work. Like, your social media isn’t Polygon’s problem—but it also is _,_ yknow? The shit employees put up reflects them, anyway.

That thought is vaguely horrifying, actually, considering the amount of things on there about Waluigi. Pat pushes it away, shelves worries about personal branding and piss for later. There’s already a whole slew of things queued up to worry about today. There has to be time to breathe.

It seems like pronouns are _the thing to do_ , in your bio. Pat clicks religiously through every other Polygon staffer, looking for them, and they’re everywhere. Not _everywhere_. Tara doesn’t have ‘em, but two-thirds of the McElroys do. Half the interns. A decent smattering of college friends. Yes, a favorite voice actor. No, not a favorite Youtuber. No, not Pat’s sister. Yes, his...his ex. 

That one, particularly, Pat mouses over for a while. 

Then it’s back to looking up Twitter bios of distant acquaintances for validation of life choices, like a _totally normal person,_ thanks. 

God, he/him would be just a lot fucking easier. But maybe they/them would be okay, annoying conversations be damned. Maybe that’d be the braver thing to do. But then again…there’s people who _really_ care out there. Like Brian said. People who it hurts, when you say the wrong thing. People who need that kind of attention. Choosing new pronouns isn’t for people who shrug and mutter and forget to shave their beards half the damn time— 

fuck. Is ‘ _it_ ’ an option? Pat feels like an _it_ right now, like a person so completely stunted in basic self-knowledge that they might as well be unhuman. 

Oh _Jesus fuck—_

thirteen clicks later and Pat discovers new depths of complete asshattery, because _of course_ there are people out there who prefer ‘ _it_ ,’ and of course Pat’s idle thoughts have strayed off the path into deeply insulting. Of course. Of course. 

Pat gets up. He...he needs some air. 

Doesn’t make it as far as outside, though. Just to the stairwell. Always a nice quiet place to sit, stupid knobbly knees pointing up, and hold your head in your hands and breathe. Echoey, too, so if anyone else comes in Pat’s got plenty of time to scramble up and flee. 

No one comes, though. Pat sits there a long time. Long enough to open a text to Brian three times, and then to close it. Nah. Not worth it. What’s that conversation gonna look like, anyway. _Hey, I don’t know anything about myself at all, do you? What’s your read on me? I trust your judgment, like, way more than my own, because I—_

Nah. Pat thumbs closed the text, goes back to the compulsive Twitter-checking. More data isn’t gonna help, but it’s comforting, in its way. Like picking a scab. 

chaotic good. He/him/his.  
  
DMs open! They/them  
  
aspiring artist, she/her  
  
**~ **scorpio** ~** **type a** ** **she/they** **  
  
max | 22 | any :)

 _Any_?

`????`

_Friday, September 7_

**(1:23 p.m.)** Hey uh  
**(1:23 p.m.)** This is a dumb question.  
**(1:24 p.m.)** But can Ipick your brain sometime about my Twitter bio  
**(1:24 p.m.)** Not work-related

 **(1:25 p.m.)** not dumb!  
**(1:26 p.m.)** sure thing! u around? 

**(1:26 p.m.)** Took a walk  
**(1:26 p.m.)** Not urgent or anything.

 **(1:27 p.m.)** k  
**(1:27 p.m.)** wanna grab a beer after work instead? 

**(1:28 p.m.)** Sure  
**(1:28 p.m.)** Not gonna drink tho ****  
**(1:28 p.m.)** Im hungover  
**(1:29 p.m.)** Went out with Legs and Thomas last night  
**(1:29 p.m.)** Too old for an immediate repeat

 **(1:29 p.m.)** lol want me to come over instead?  
**(1:30 p.m.)** we can try out the luigi coop

 **(1:30 p.m.)** Great

 **(1:31 p.m.)** :thumbsup:

Pat sits in the stairwell another sixteen minutes, pressing the phone to his face and breathing heavy and wondering how much of the next four hours of internal monologue he can drown out with thrash metal before coworkers start poking him and mouthing warnings about hearing loss. Probably, like, at least half of it. Good enough. 

And it's...it's oddly comforting, knowing that this disaster conversation is now on his schedule for tonight, that this champagne cork is getting popped and then it'll be over, no more pressure building, no more chances to make bad decisions. Just flat stale mistakes and regret headaches.

He'll sort it tonight. Probably around six, seven? At first Pat'll be too anxious to talk about it, will dawdle around, set up the game, play, talk about work. Eventually Brian'll get curious, ask _so what was that thing you wanted to ask me about?_ And Pat'll have to say it, have to reference that inebriated conversation, bring up his points again, and this time really listen to what Brian’s saying. Ask what he means. By genderqueer. By all of it. And Brian’ll be patient, because he always is, he’ll say _oh it’s really okay! I mean I’m not an expert, but…_ and then will spill ornate theses on gender so intricate and well-formed that Pat can _hear_ the semicolons. And Pat’ll be overwhelmed. And Brian’ll tell him he’s good. Valid, that’s what the kids say, that’s what Brian’ll say. _You’re valid_ . And Pat’ll ask him what to do, and Brian’ll say _it’s up to you,_ and that’ll be infuriating. But if Pat figures out the right expression of pathetic bewildered social-media-illiterate confusion, maybe Brian’ll just tell him. At worst, it’ll be an awkward few hours. At best, it’ll sort all this, and Pat’ll never have to think about it again. 

Yeah, Pat nods to himself, as he stands. That’s how this is gonna go. That’s something Pat can handle. Totally doable.

`????`

The universe has never respected Patrick Gill's plans, so it should be no surprise when it doesn’t start today.


	3. pictures of me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm not surprised at all and really   
>  why should i be?   
>  see nothing wrong   
>  see nothing wrong   
>  so sick and tired of all these   
>  pictures of me   
>  completely wrong   
>  totally wrong   
>  go walking by   
>  here come another guy   
>  jailer who sells   
>  personal hells   
>  who'd like to see me down on   
>  my fucking knees   
>  everybody's dying just to get the disease.
> 
> \-- "pictures of me," Elliott Smith, Either/Or

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this (teeny tiny) chapter contain alcohol consumption -- to drunkenness but not excess -- also more angst.

It all goes as Pat expected. The subway, the walk, the couch, the console, the conversation. All of it normal, shuffling through the easy familiar softshoe of spending an evening together with a stated goal but no real rush to get to it. 

Then Pat offers a drink— 

to be a good host, most definitely, and not at all because he’s only brave enough to talk about this while he’s shitfaced— 

and Brian says _sure, whatever you’re having_. 

“Sidecar?” Pat says, ‘cause he’s not fancy but he knows a coupla cocktails. “Uh, I mean. It’s a bourbon sidecar. I don’t have brandy.” 

Brian giggles. “I’d’a been real impressed if you had brandy on hand. That’s a little, like, _Victorian_ , isn’t it? More Simone’s thing.”

“Yeah,” Pat grins. “Sorry, not that classy. Don’t have a snuffbox either. So, sidecar?” 

“Gimme just the bourbon straight. Maybe an ice cube, though? If it’s not fancy.”

Pat fishes out an ice cube from the freezer and pours the kid a couple fingers of liquor, tries not to feel emasculated by the fact that his coworker with pink fingernails drinks whiskey neat. Like, there’s no reason _drink preference_ is related to your fucking dick size, okay? Fuckin’ patriarchy.

Well, since the cocktail’s only for himself now he doesn’t feel pressured to look up the right recipe. He can just douse his whiskey with a splash of cointreau and let the proportions fall where they may, sickly-sweet or otherwise.

Brian takes his drink with a _thanks_ , and sips, and winces, and laughs. 

“Oho, you _tricked_ me, Pat Gill.” 

Pat feels the wince stutter across his own shoulders, draws back his elbow. “Uh, sorry. No good? I’m not much of a drinker. I can get you something else? A beer?” 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Brian smiles, gestures a wave. “I like it—just surprised me. Bourbon’s sweeter. This is, like, _scotch_.” He sips again. “It’s good though. Smokey.” 

His tone’s relaxed—contrite, even—but Pat still finds it hard to fight the self-conscious flush. Of course Brian’s palate would be discerning. Pat wonders if he should mention that this shit isn’t even _his_ , not really—he’s never bought a nice whiskey in his life—it’s a gift from Tara, who prefers gin but knows that Pat’s a baby about things that are too bittery-floral. No, Pat has no fucking clue what he’s doing, with liquors or otherwise, and Brian’s probably biting his tongue right now to stop from mentioning that this shit is too nice for mixing in cocktails. 

(It almost certainly is. But Pat can’t figure out any other way to drink it.)

Whatever Brian’s thinking though, he doesn’t say it. Pat batters down his blush, sidles onto the couch, re-concentrates on the matter at hand. The plan. Talking, playing games, shooting the shit, waiting for the right moment. 

And well, if Pat’s shoulders are tight because he’s already three steps behind on nomenclature tonight, well, fuck. There’s nothing for that.

`????`

“So…your Twitter bio?”

They’re drunker and more relaxed, by the time the question comes around—for Pat, _more relaxed_ means sprawled out wide over the couch—for Brian _more relaxed_ is folded up cross-legged on a single cushion and looking strangely small. 

“Yeah.” He’s relieved, though not surprised, that Brian brought it up. Brian doesn’t stay on task, but he almost always circles back. “Yeah, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Is it about your pronouns?” 

Pat chokes on his drink, and it’s an ugly choke—the kind where burning liquid gets somewhere in your trachea and that _hurts_ and makes you sputter. Very cool, Gill. But he forces down his bodily reaction as fast as possible and Brian has the decency not to ask if he’s okay. 

“Yeah,” his voice is jagged from the coughing, which sounds annoyingly like it’s husky with emotion. “Yeah. How’d you know?” 

“Just a guess.” Brian gives a little smile. It’s probably not a pitying smile. That’s probably just a feeling that the bourbon—no, the _scotch_ —is imposing, some projection of Pat’s own anxieties. “I dunno. ‘cause we talked about it that one time? And like...there’s not that much interesting, in Twitter bios? Besides pronouns.” 

“Fair,” Pat says, instead of _thank god you’re fucking smart you beautiful asshole please just keep guessing right._ “So uh. I dunno. I know I should put them up there, but—”

“You don’t have to,” Brian cuts him off, sudden. “There’s no, like, _should_.” 

Pat pauses, wrong-footed, but being interrupted is probably a mercy because he didn’t know where his sentence was going anyway. He’s just this side of fuzzy-brained, trying to hop over to pronouns, but Brian hung up on the _should_ part. And Pat wants to try to get this right. 

“Allegra said you should,” Pat reports. “And she’s right. It’s shitty, that only trans people have to do that.” 

“Trans people don’t have to, either. Only if they want to.” 

“ _You_ do.” 

“Yeah.” Brian shifts a little, goes from cross-legged to knees-up, turning on the couch so that they’re facing. It crackles Pat’s nerves, the turn, the controller being put down, the gaze, all telegraphing that this conversation has taken the exit for Serious. Pat feels like he’s only skitching along behind. “I do it. But I’m cis, so it’s easier.” 

“I’m not—” Pat starts, and _fuck_ , that tone is a little too much. Too growly, maybe just leftover from the choking. “I’m cis too.” 

“Are you sure?” Brian cocks his head.

“I’m not _trans_ ,” Pat grimaces, sits up, and _fuck_ there’s too much drink in him, so much the world lurches a bit uncertainly. “Not that—fuck me, I’m not—it’s not because it’s _bad_ —I just—look.” 

“I’m looking,” he says blandly, as Pat tries not to make a complete intolerable ass of himself. 

“I’m not saying—it’s not a bad thing to be. Trans people are fucking _awesome_. They’re—they like—go through all kinds of shit, just to exist and feel okay and not get screamed at or fired or all kinds of stupid bigoted bullshit.” 

“Agreed,” 

“I’m not like that. I’m just a dude that doesn’t care that much what people call me. I can’t—I’ve never—” 

The words break off because they’re not fucking _going anywhere_ , and Brian is oddly, frustratingly quiet, just watching him with those wide eyes and face serious and unreadable and earnest and focused and open and all the opposite things to the feeling in Pat’s wrenched-up guts. 

“I just didn’t want to make a deal of it,” Pat mutters, and has to avert his gaze. “But I thought if I put he/him you would call me out.” 

“I wouldn’t,” Brian murmurs, and it’s _gentle_ , and the gentleness itself is rather terrible. 

“Yeah, it was a dumb thing to think,” he grimaces and resolves to drop it. This was stupid after all. Why’d he need to make this such a deal? Why’d he get caught up in thinking—

whatever. All he has to do is put he/him and then Allegra’ll be happy and Thomas and everyone else. Why did he think he needed more advice on the matter. Advice, approval, no one else gets that, why should he need it, why did he think Brian might call him on his bullshit— “I guess I overthought it. Thanks.” 

“It’s cool,” Brian says lightly, reaches out a hand to touch Pat’s leg where it’s splayed inelegantly in front of him. “You should just put whatever you feel like.” 

Pat draws away instinctively, at the touch. It’s not that he doesn’t want it. He does. He wants to lean in, to rip it open, to say _but I don’t know what I feel like_ and see what this little classification wunderkind can do with that. 

But instead he just says,“great.” and draws away. 

Brian looks at him, uneasy. It’s not hard to read on his face, that he’s trying to figure out what to do, how not to fuck up. That he’s unsure he hasn’t fucked it up already. It’s a familiar kinda feeling. Pat must be bleeding it from his pores, leeching it into his surroundings, infecting them with muddied blurs of ugly uncertain colors. 

“Another round?” he asks, turning toward the screen again.

“Sure,” Brian says, without asking if he means of the game or of drinks, so Pat just queues up both. 

`????`

It’s hours later—Pat’s just about to make that familiar quip of _wanna crash on the couch or do you prefer sleeping on the subway_ —when something in Brian breaks. 

“Pat,” he gets out, pensive, like he’s unsettled, like he’s been thinking about it all this time. “You really don’t owe anything to Twitter, you know that?” 

Well, fuck, when you put it that way it just sounds stupid. 

Pat shrugs. “Yeah, I know. Of course. Just trying to be less of an asshole.” 

“You’re not an asshole,” Brian echoes automatically, in that way people do when you say shitty things about yourself that they feel obligated to counteract. It’s bullshit, and Pat must be fucking tired, ‘cause he usually isn’t quite so obvious.

There’s a stretch of sleepy sore-eyed silence between them, when neither of them is really sure if the conversation is over. It doesn’t _feel_ over. Pat feels like— 

well, he feels like a fool, for thinking that Brian could fix this. That he would have like a...a _diagnostic questionnaire_ , that he would blast out seventeen rapid-fire questions that hurt like hell to answer—that he’d calculate a _score_ — 

a glance over at Brian dims this useless hope. The kid’s just staring at him, eyes blinking sleepy but intent, the picture of a thoughtful listener and with absolutely nothing to give, except enough rope for Pat to hang himself— 

enough silence so that Pat can hear the tense caesura of his stupid breath— 

hear himself waiting for a question— 

a question he hasn’t thought of yet but that’ll pull it all into a new light, make everything clear— 

“Just do what you feel like,” Brian repeats, patting his knee. “Like, literally the whole reason people put their pronouns on there is to make things easier for people like you. It shouldn’t…” 

There’s more, Brian says more, but Pat isn’t listening, caught in the rush of disappointed anticipation and the strange sudden sharp left of _people like you_ and he’s missed the off-ramp of this conversation and now he’s stranded on the median. 

“Thanks,” he says dully, because however Brian ended his sentence it was almost certainly worthy of thanks. Probably it was kind, thoughtful, helpful, the sort of thing a smart and patient soul says to your coworker who’s having an identity crisis, when you’re a nice kid who doesn’t mind lending an ear. “You look tired, and I’m beat. Old age, and all. You wanna crash on the couch again?” 

Brian hesitates a moment, wavers. It’s late, but it could be later—sometimes they play or work or complain so long into the night that it’s downright _stupid_ for Brian to go home—inarguably stupid, stalking 3am streets and trusting all-night subway schedules is a recipe for disaster—but it’s only just past midnight. It’s late, but not that late. It could go either way. 

The kid’s tipsy, at least. And the couch is right there. And Brian knows—well, he _says_ it’s comfy. 

And Pat wants him to stay. 

“I’ll go,” Brian decides with a sharp little nod. “Better to battle this hangover in my own bed,” he laughs, and springs up more elegantly than Pat thought he could manage—a feat only somewhat spoiled by how he immediately bangs his shins scrabbling around for his jacket. 

“I appreciate you not puking on my carpet again,” Pat deadpans, as he stands, and it’s easy to make his voice sardonic. 

“That was _one time,_ Pat Gill, and it was the _sushi_ ,” Brian pouts, and shoves his stuff together, and drags a hand through his hair as if that did anything to tame it at all. 

He hovers a second, in the doorway, as if he’s going to say something more. But he’s tired, and he maybe doesn’t come up with anything, and just grins and offers his jaunty _good night, Patrick!_ in lieu of any parting jokes. 

Pat closes the door too fast to watch Brian strut off, closes it with urgency, closes it as if it were midwinter and he was desperately trying to move quick enough, to stop heat from escaping.

Fighting entropy like that is a losing battle, though. Warmth flees the house, his living room’s messier than it was this morning, and things don’t spontaneously fix themselves. That’s just the way the universe is. 

Something in Pat feels a chill, an ache, but the bourb—the _scotch_ —gives him heartburn when he lies down to sleep, and it’s kinda funny how things balance out like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promise, promise we'll turn it around and soon! brian's on the case now.

**Author's Note:**

> a quiet shoutout to the beautiful people who write me comments and ask me not to publish them <3 <3 always an option and verily, they often make me cry tears of joy. thank you readers, lurkers, and commenters all. i love you and your analysis of my rambly metaphors makes me cry and you can hmu on twitter at @canfishvape if you wanna dm me.


End file.
